Postcards – the original social travel network

by Scott Carmichael on

Before Twitter, before FourSquare and even before email – people used postcards to “check in to” their location. The postcard lived in easier times – in an era when we’d arrive at our destination and spend a week actually visiting things and relaxing instead of scrambling to find a Wi-Fi signal to get our email.

It has been 18 years since I last sent anyone a postcard, and I clearly remember buying a stack of cards and stamps from a souvenir shop in Blackpool, UK and copying down the addresses from my PDA. Yes – even 18 years ago, I relied on technology to keep track of my life.

The fun thing about postcards is that they lack everything current technology gives us. In most cases, the postcard wouldn’t show up till weeks after you arrived back from your destination, and they all had one thing in common – cheesy photos of cheesy tourist destinations.

Still – there was something comforting about letting your closest friends know that you were “having a great time”, even though “wish you were here” was usually a lie. In those days, your social circle was limited to ten or twenty people – not the 500 we add to Facebook nowadays.

For those that were on the road a lot (and had more to report), there was the aerogramme. Check out Don George on his aerogramme memories.

We asked some of the Gadling team members whether they still enjoy writing postcards:

Annie Scott:

This will sound shallow, but it’s fun: my friend Debbie and I always find one with a horrible-looking dude on it and send it with something to the effect of “I’m in Holland and I found your boyfriend” on the back. It cracks us up.

I once sent five postcards to the same person because I couldn’t *quite* remember her address and wasn’t sure I got it right any of the five times. She didn’t get one. Oops.

I totally write on the edges. I always worry about where they’re going to put those tracking stickers and cover up my words.

Chris Owen:

I remember going to the post office with my mother as a little boy to get the special post card stamps it took. No one dared put a “regular” stamp on a postcard. She bought them for my father who was a traveling salesman and would send home cards “from the road”. If my parents would go out of town and I stayed behind, my mother would “kiss” one (blot her ruby red lipstick) for me and send it along. When my brother flew off to conquer the world he would send cards from all over the planet. I don’t know that I have ever sent one. I have horrible handwriting, how many “I’m on the ship” cards can you send anyway and no way I would stand in line at the post office.

I did think once think of starting a company that made post card machines. The plan was to position them by icon shots of places around the world, somebody stands in front of them with the mountain, ocean, cool thing in the background, then the machine prints it and spits it out, postage stamped for the buyer to write on and mail. Cell phones screwed up that idea.

Darren Murph:

The last postcards we sent were last year — snagged a few from a hotel in Northern California, and wrote on them as we traveled up the 101.

Stopped off in a tiny, tiny town with a post office around the size of a shoebox and sent ’em in hopes of getting a pretty random town stamp when they passed through processing. Particularly to grandmothers, sending postcards with gorgeous scenes on them are real treats to receive.

Don George

Postcards! I always used to send postcards — to friends and family but also to myself. In some really out of the way places, it would take so long to reach me that months later I would be happily surprised to receive a postcard that would immediately transport me to the sea-scented, palm-shaded table where I’d had written it.

I’d cover every square milli-inch of the surface.

I especially remember the iconic ones like Notre Dame, the Acropolis and the quintessential palm-leaning-over-sunny-beach shot….

The last postcard I remember writing and mailing was in 2002 at the wonderful “post barrel” on Floreana Island in the Galapagos….

Elizabeth Seward:

I send them frequently.

My nephew and I have had a postcard routine going strong for a few years now: I send him postcards, he tacks them onto his bedroom wall. He’s 12. It’s adorable. And I always find myself writing quite a bit, around the edges, telling him cool things about the place I’m visiting.

Heather Poole:

Post cards remind me of Camp, which reminds me of Possum Kingdom Lake, which reminds me of a week’s worth of begging – Dear Mom, Come get me NOW!

When I take a long trip I use postcards as a way to divide the scrapbook into different city sections.

Laurel Miller:

My friends and I do the same “here’s your boyfriend” cards. I used to religiously send detailed cards to friends and family but then I discovered email. But I still collect weird/cool/beautiful cards as souvenirs.

Melanie Nayer:

My Grama gets a postcard from me from any destination. Her favorite was from The Vatican (which I find somewhat odd since we’re Jewish). She still talks about it, because the stamp says “The Vatican.”

Mike Barish:

I still send them and decide who the recipients will be based on what I see and who I’m reminded of. Always try to find silly postcards and include inside jokes with friends. Yes, grandmas love postcards from far away lands. I do that too.

Sean McLachlan:

My son and I collect postcards together. He likes having a bunch of them on his walls and keeps the rest in Mom’s old lunchbox.

Yesterday, on my first day in Ethiopia I wrote three–one to my wife and son, and the other two to friends. I also like buying old postcards (50 to 100 years old) of places I’ve been. It’s cool tosee how a place like Damascus or Delhi has changed.

Gadling Twitter reader @kirsten_al responded to our question with some great memories:

I still send postcards, I still love receiving postcards. In this era of digital-everything (including digital postcards) it’s comforting to receive a piece of handwritten mail from Peru or Japan. I collect my postcards on a pin board above my workstation & even the NYC postcard I have from a friend in Brooklyn is a vivid reminder of the place I hope to call home one day.

When I lived with my best friend for a few months last year I marveled at the collection of postcards on her fridge. Though I don’t always get to send a postcard to everyone I know on every trip I take, I never fail to send her one. We’ve been friends for 30 years and she keeps all I’ve sent her displayed in the kitchen so every morning she’s reminded of me and smiles knowing I am pursuing my great passion all around the world. I didn’t even realize how many I’d sent her until I stood there drinking my morning coffee … her fridge is like a diary of my travels. Now, I’ll never stop sending postcards!

Here are some other great Twitter replies:

@Gadling obsessively! postcards are my souvenirs for friends/fam. #thrifty #thoughtfulless than a minute ago via webmiss maria
miss_maria

@Gadling There are few things I love more than postcards! I’m constantly on a mission to gather them for @atlasobscuraless than a minute ago via TweetDeckSarah Brumble
littlebrumble

@Gadling I still use postcards but just to my 3 year old nephew.less than a minute ago via TwitterrificLisa Taylor
the_otherlisa

@jettingaround @Gadling I write around 400 a year.less than a minute ago via ÜberSocialNick Hawkins
whereishawkins


What about you?

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[Photos: Postcard rack: Flickr/tts, Burger Chef: Flickr/bayswater97, Sea Point Pavilion: Flickr/Mallix]

Photo of the day (12.16.10)

by Meg Nesterov on


What charmed me about this photo from Thimphu, Bhutan, other than the pleasant colors and lines, was the caption. Flickr user AndreaKW translated the suggestion box’s Dzongkha script as literally “thoughts box” and I love the idea, much less pressure than coming up with constructive suggestions. A thoughts box could have notes like “Next time, pack fewer shoes” or “Why don’t I ever eat meat on a stick at home?” or even the classic “Help! I’m trapped in a thoughts box!” The possibilities are endless, especially for traveler interaction, like the postcards from strangers project.

Have any photos to leave in our thoughts box? How about adding them to the Gadling group on Flickr? We might just choose one of your shots as our Photo of the Day.

Postcrossing celebrates five years of postcard revolution

by Sean McLachlan on

There’s something very special about sending or receiving a postcard. It’s one of the simple joys of travel, yet in the age of email, Skype, and social networking, you’d think the old-fashioned postcard would have become a thing of the past.

It hasn’t. Thanks to Postcrossing, a postcard trading organization, postcards are undergoing a revival. Postcrossing turns five years old this week and in that short time it has racked up some staggering statistics–more than 4.7 million postcards have been sent by more than 190,000 members to about 200 countries. Those postcards have logged 25,771,990,953 km. That’s 643,093 laps around the world!

One odd aspect of Postcrossing is that most correspondents are complete strangers. Postcrossing wants to start a “postcard revolution” by getting people to start sending more postcards, not just to their friends and family, but to random fans around the world.

Postcrossing is free to join. Members put their address into a secure database. When you request to send a card, another member’s address is sent to you. Once your card is received and registered, you’re next in line to get a card from another stranger! It’s a lot of fun and a good way to spread international friendship and teach geography to your kids. I and at least one other Gadling blogger are Postcrossing members. So if you’re tired of only receiving junk mail in your mailbox, give Postcrossing a try.

In case you’re wondering, this is the mailbox just outside the post office in Harar, Ethiopia. That’s the left arm of yours truly sending some cards to my son and some fellow Postcrossing members.

The naughty postcard museum

by Sean McLachlan on

The British have always been famous for their humor, both dry wit and the naughtier brand. One man who combined the two is being celebrated in a new museum that opened in Ryde in the Isle if Wight yesterday.

Donald McGill, Britain’s “king of vulgarity”, illustrated thousands of postcards over an almost sixty-year career. He was best known for simple double-entedres like the one pictured to the right. He also has the distinction of making it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the most sales of an individual postcard–one featuring a bookish man and an attractive young woman sitting under a tree. The guy peers over a volume and asks the girl, “Do you like Kipling?” to which she replies, “I don’t know, you naughty boy, I’ve never kippled!” That sold more than six million copies.

One of his most popular, and most controversial, shows two men admiring an attractive woman as one says to the other, “She’s a nice girl. Doesn’t drink or smoke, and only swears when it slips out!”

In the age of Internet pornography these barely qualify for a PG rating, but in Britain before the Sixties they shocked stogy traditional sensibilities. In 1953 many local jurisdictions raided the shops selling his postcards and burned any they found. The next year at the age of 79, McGill had to face what the museum’s curator called a “show trial” for obscenity. He got off with a fine, but the ruling almost killed the saucy postcard industry.

The Donald McGill Museum website is still under construction but shows some more examples of McGill’s work.


Photo courtesy Donald McGill via Wikimedia Commons.

Postcard fans trade four million cards

by Sean McLachlan on

Who says snail mail is dying?

Postcrossing is an organization where strangers from different countries can trade postcards. Once you get a free membership, you can request to send a card and another member’s address is sent to you, along with a unique country-coded number. You pick a card, write a message along with the code, and mail it. Once the recipient gets the card and registers it on the site, you’re next in line to get a card from a different stranger.

With almost 170,000 members from 209 countries, it’s a fast-growing club of postcard fans. So fast growing, in fact, that today they reached the landmark of trading four million cards. They only reached two million cards barely a year ago, so this idea is really catching on.

We’ve posted about Postcrossing in more detail here, and revealed the names of some Gadling bloggers past and present who are members. As one of them I can say it’s a lot of fun and a great way to teach your kids about the world. So if you like getting and sending postcards, give it a try and help Postcrossing get to five million cards sometime before the end of 2010.

Postcards have been around since the late 1800s. The card included here dates from 1919 and shows a place in Richmond, Virginia where three rail lines crossed one another. Personally I love the look of vintage cards, and many fellow Postcrossing members have received them from me.